Chicago Art and Artists: Oral History Project

In January 2014, with funding from the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Archives of American Art launched a two-year initiative to improve access to primary sources documenting American art and design in Chicago collections. This project aligns with the Terra Foundation’s goals to foster innovative approaches to American art scholarship and with the Archives’ mission to collect, preserve and make available primary source material documenting the visual arts in the United States.

An integral component of the project was the production of interviews of Chicago artists and art dealers for the Archives’ oral history program. The interviews gather a wealth of information on Chicago’s art history, adding to the Archives’ existing in-depth interviews in and about Chicago including with Katharine Kuh, Fitzhugh Dinkins, William McBride, Don Baum, Ruth Duckworth, Richard A. Florsheim, Susanne Ghez, Richard Howard Hunt, Richard Gray, Gladys Nilsson, Miyoko Ito, Anne Rorimer, Archibald Motley, and many others.

For more Chicago primary sources, visit Chicago’s Art-Related Archival Materials, a Terra Foundation Resource.